Middle Ground – Book Dummy #2 at scale

Middle Ground, Book Dummy #2, top view 2018 copyright Douglas Stockdale

Earlier this month I had discussed my first book dummy (proof of concept) that I had developed for the Middle Ground project to explore the idea of using a leporello (accordion) book design.

My next step was to create a book dummy (#2) that has the page count and interior photographs would be at the approximated final (trim) size of what I had envisioned. This should be very similar to the reader’s experience and I really wanted to visually how the 12″ wide page images would look. To simulate the final book with this book dummy, I took a page from my book design workshop and placed my photographs inside a similar size and designed book. In this case the backbone for my book dummy was the leporello book by Robert Lyons, Pictures from the Next Day, published by Zatara Press, which I had reviewed earlier here.

The Lyons book is slightly larger than the trim size I had envisioned, but using this book as my back-bone allowed me to experiment with another design element for this book; did I want small white margins around each image or did I want to have the image printed full bleed without white margins? For the later, I did make another book dummy (#3) with full bleed images for comparison. The white margin is a design issue related to aesthetics, practicality and consistency for my concept.

I think practicality is going to drive this decision as a full bleed means that when each page is printed, a very slight portion of the image is trimmed away. So would any of the images suffer as a result of this? Regretfully I do have one important image in which part of the subject just barely touches the top of the image frame. Any trimming of this image during the book production I feel is going to have an adverse visual effect on this photograph.

All in all, I really enjoy the large images that result with this book dummy. The question may come down to the resulting cost of this book. I am in the process of obtaining some printing and bindery quotes to potentially self-publish this book as soon as possible.

I posted a poll over the weekend as to the question of which of the conceptual subjects for two different projects is more of concern and it appears that finishing this project first is not an issue. Also as anticipated for the daily unexpectable with our White House, da’ wall was a news item again over the weekend. So I will keep moving ahead!

Let me know if you want to be placed on the interest list (doug@douglasstockdale.com) for Middle Ground and if you can help me network for potential exhibitions, I would really, really appreciate that very much!! (expect this to part to be repeated very often!)

In the image below, after adding the photographs to the Lyons book, I also started adding some post-it notes about the design and layout options. Btw, the ensuing thickness of all of the leporello pages with my images clipped in created such a bulky mess that I can not close the book cover on this dummy. Increased my sensitivity for the thickness of the book cover’s spine needless to say.

Cheers!